Oracle Blog

Oracle's Thin Client and Server Based Computing Group Blog

Monday Aug 16, 2010

An attempt to use Jing here. Even went "Pro". Still a five minute limit and I got cut short, but you'll get the gist. Check out the functionality! Big hat tip to the folks in Hamburg, Leeds, and Dublin. :) (I just realized I have 2GB traffic limit per month with pro...I'll see what I can do)

Folks, these are what we call "Big Guns". What's more, they are extremely intelligent...no scratch that. They are "scary smart". Be honest, you've sat through more than your share of executives pitching things they could care less about. These two gentlemen are in a different league. Passionate is the best word that describes them.

I'm sure long time followers of Think Thin are more than familiar with the Executive branch of "the company formerly known as Sun Microsystems" and you've seen John Fowler many times. But unless you were an Oracle customer, you may not have had the chance to hear Edward Screven speak. With absolutely zero patronizing involved here (like he reads this blog), watch him. He's brilliant. He gets it. And by "it" I mean pretty much anything you could imagine, but specifically he gets VDI.

If there's one thing I've learned about the executives at Oracle, it's that they don't mess around. You wouldn't get this caliber of people talking about the entire virtualization stack if Oracle was not committed to it. I've also noticed, "Committed" = "Wants to dominate" in Oracle speak.

So to the v12n world out there, and specifically the VDI market, watch out. The "Big Guns" are about to fire a warning shot across the bow of the marketplace. To paraphrase Al Pacino's character in "Scent of a Woman", We are just getting warmed up.

Monday Aug 02, 2010

I'll be on Oracle TechCast Live tomorrow at 10 AM Pacific where I'll be having a nice little chat with Justin Kestelyn about Sun Ray and Oracle VDI.

I'll also be taking some community questions. From the TechCast Live page, you can can sign in using your Twitter, Facebook, AIM, or Myspace account. Can't promise I'll be able to answer every type of question, we have different rules at Oracle than Sun did. I hope however to make it worth your while and I hope you find it enjoyable.

Of course the "I love my job and I'd really like to keep it" answer would be Intel since Oracle does not offer any servers based on the 12 core Opteron (just 8 core models). But let's throw caution to the wind and think about this in the context of what a Sun Ray Server in "traditional" mode (i.e. not kiosk mode) really is. It's a desktop. Unlike kiosk mode where normally applications execute "somewhere else" (i.e. terminal server, a VM, etc) in traditional mode the applications execute on the Sun Ray Server. Unlike a desktop, it's multi-user.

So while you definitely want something "server class", you also want something that is going to run \*your\* applications at the best price/performance ratio.

At the end of the day, both options offer 24 threads. The Intel solution does so by offering 6 Hyper-Threaded Technology (HTT) cores per socket and the AMD by offering 12 single threaded cores per socket. There's a 1 GHz clock speed difference favoring the Intel solution, but let's not fall prey to the "megahertz myth". Not just yet anyways.

While you can go out there and find all kinds of "Bench This", "Spec That" types of reviews, those tests are generally written to take the most advantage out of any platform. However, most of the end user applications we all use aren't.

So, which design is better for "desktop applications", Intel with HTT or AMD with all those glorious physical cores?

Here's I get to use the most popular, catch all answer of all-time when it comes to any Server Based Computing or VDI question.

It depends.

It depends on the applications. Doesn't everything?

Recent history would indicate that desktop applications prefer the multiple cores over HTT. Or perhaps better stated, the developers of those applications may prefer multi-core development (or at least find it easier).

Remember that Pentium HTT ("Northwood") actually was replaced on the desktop in favor of multi-core processors (see CoreDuo). In a traditional Sun Ray environment where a variety of "desktop applications" execute on the Sun Ray Server, understanding some of the possible reasons HTT was replaced by multi-core is interesting, if not important.

When HTT was introduced, most desktop applications simply weren't able to take advantage of the it. Add to that, the HTT chips actually consumed a lot more power. End result was a system that increased your energy costs while decreasing your application's performance. Explain that one to your boss, Mr Technology influencer. Especially with "all those CPUs" showing up in mpstat or perfmon.

None of that of course was the fault of the technology, well the power was, but not the bad performance or the misconception of threads as physical processor that sits in a socket. Truthfully our traditional performance monitoring tools still promote that misconception. The performance was due to applications not taking advantage of the HTT and it being on a single core. Didn't it seem like around 2004-05, the catch-all response to all desktop application performance queries was: "Pentium 4, you say? Did you try disabling Hyper-Threading in the BIOS?"

With Nehalem, Intel put all that bad PR behind them and brought HTT back to the desktop, but with a twist, it's also multi-core.

This is different, but is it better? Maybe. Maybe not. Probably, but...it depends. (Ha!)

We know that the OSes are better equipped for HTT (i.e. Solaris is now optimized for it along with a million other things), and they actually don't consume that much more power, so they are "greener". Goodness for the data center.

From my experience, I'd say both Sun Ray Software and the Oracle VDI stack performs better with HTT (based on sizing numbers in kiosk mode and per core VM sizing data under Solaris) than they did under the non-HTT models of those chips. Considerably better, all other things being equal (clock speed, # of cores, etc). But those aren't typically considered "desktop applications", they are more in the realm of pseudo-operating systems, or at least "Server Systems". Both of which have been HTT aware for a long time, but that doesn't exactly help \*your\* application. Which leads us to the million dollar question:

How many of the applications that you use today are parallelized so they
can execute across multiple threads simultaneously (i.e. HTT aware)? If the answer is
"very few" then you're not taking advantage of the Intel design and the physical cores on
AMD solution may actually perform better for your apps even with the "lower clock
speed".

Making applications multi-core aware is fairly easy (says the non-programming "developer"), and most existing applications already support this. However adding HTT capabilities to existing applications is considerably far more work. And sure, there are those that will say that HTT can help certain multi-core aware applications depending on what they are doing. Though I think a lot of these arguments mistake multi-threading for Hyper-Threading, which in fact is simultaneous multi-threading.

In a single user use case, the average person might never know the applications they are using aren't taking advantage of HTT technology because of the multi-core and relatively high clock rate. The HTT multi-core becomes a Swiss Army Knife so to speak. If your app can take advantage of HTT, great. If it can't, we've got cores. And on top of that we have speed! That's beautiful for a PC. A single user PC.

But how well does it scale out when we are talking about multiple users running those "non-HTT aware" apps on the same server? In the AMD design, multi-core (but non-HTT aware) apps have 24 "physical" cores to work with, what's the trade off of the "virtual" cores on the HTT chips? Is the clock speed enough to overcome? The other features on HTT chips enough to tip the scales? Maybe. Probably. It depends.

If you were running Sun Ray Server Software in Kiosk mode or choosing a server to be the hypervisor for Oracle VDI, go with Intel and their HTT "Nehalem" processors. You won't be disappointed. At least I haven't been. I'm sure I'd also have a lot of good things to say about the AMD as well.

But if you are actually running desktop apps on the Sun Ray Server, and trying to do so at any kind of scale, I'd say it's at least worth doing some investigating and maybe even some application testing at scale. Then you can really understand what's the best fit for your environment.

Thursday Jul 22, 2010

If you're interested in learning about Oracle's VDI offering, our very own VDI Engineering Manager (and personal friend) Dirk Grobler will be holding a webinar that covers the benefits of VDI to modern enterprises. Along with the typical VDI benefits surrounding centralization and TCO, this high level overview will include an
architecture of Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, how it works, and
how it can be used in the modern enterprise to increase manageability,
security, and flexibility.

Monday Jul 19, 2010

In a recent post I highlighted some new features offered for Sun Ray Software 5. If you actually read the press release, you probably saw mention of a "Sun Ray connector for VMware View 4". And you might be wondering why I didn't blog about it in that recent post.

Why didn't I mention1 this new feature? I was actually waiting to blog about it once the VMware HCL pages reflected both the new software and Sun Ray 3+ as being View 4 Certified under a search for "Oracle". But since the software is available, why wait? The certification process is done, and we are just waiting on web pages to be updated, so have at it.

Update: Since I was already asked if the VMware View 4 certification applies to only the Sun Ray 3 Plus, I thought it best if I addressed that here as well. If you understand the Sun Ray Architecture (i.e. nothing runs on the Sun Ray itself, it all runs on the Sun Ray Server) , there's no reason to have any correlation between the actual Sun Ray device models and our Sun Ray Connector for VMWare View. However, that's not how VMware does their HCL (or one can read that as nothing else is like a Sun Ray). So in short, this will work with everything from a Sun Ray 1 to a Sun Ray 3+ (including the OVDC) though our MMR features will vary. We've asked VMware and we will have to wait to see how open they are to a single entry that reads "All Sun Ray Clients".

1Since I'm all about honesty, now I'll tell you the real reason I didn't mention it. I \*thought\* we were going to name it something easy to remember that, you know, made sense to someone looking for a Sun Ray connector that was certified to work with View 4. Perhaps even something catchy like "Sun Ray Connector for VMware View 4". When looking at the download page I saw "Sun Ray Connector for VMware View 1.2 Manager" and thought it was the old version. Note this is purely my opinion and it is not that of my employer, nor is it meant to disparage, poke fun at2, or otherwise make those who named the product feel bad. I honestly thought we were changing the name.

2OK, I may be poking fun, but it is well intended, utmost respect, kind of poking fun.

Thursday Jul 15, 2010

Those who watch things like SunSolve for new patch releases noticed starting last Saturday that a slew of new patches began showing up. If you read the "fixes" in the patch read me files, that's exactly what it looked like...a patch. But there's so much more. Beyond numerous bug fixes ("black screens", High CPU using Flash or USB redirection, etc) these patches enable some great new features, details of which were in a press release today. Just some of the highlights:

New Platform Support:

Support for Oracle Enterprise Linux as a Sun Ray Server Software Platform

Wednesday Jul 14, 2010

The Oracle Desktop Virtualization Team is proud to announce the availability of PC/SC-lite 1.3 and CCID IFD Handler 1.3.10 (enables PC/SC-lite to access external USB Smart Card readers) for Sun Ray Server Software running on Solaris 10. The packages are available for download here.

This update is recommended to increase security and improve stability of smart card use in a Sun Ray environment.

The 1.3 release contains two critical bug fixes and incorporates the fix for security vulnerability CVE-2010-0407 discovered in the M.U.S.C.L.E. open source project, and described at the National Vulnerability Database website.

Tuesday Jul 13, 2010

I am proud to present a new page on the Sun Ray Software Wiki, a detailed work flow of the Sun Ray Boot Process. This took a bit of work to get into human readable format on behalf of several people, not the least of which are Paul Kasper and (the non-blogging) Kent Peacock. Please take a look and provide feedback!

Thursday Apr 08, 2010

This might be old news for some of you, but Oracle has just released the new Sun Ray 3 Plus Client. Beyond providing the normal Getting Started Guide that typically comes in the box, the product team wanted to provide a place to give you (our users) up-to-the-minute release notes, detailed technical specifications, and the environmental data for the new shiny Sun Ray.

The Sun Ray Hardware Information Center isn't fancy (yet), but it does provide the juicy tidbits and important information for the new Sun Ray 3 Plus Client. If there is anything missing or other information you'd like to see, either provide a comment on the wiki or on this blog. As always, I'll see what I can do.

Tuesday Nov 24, 2009

Hot on the heels of the Sun Ray Software 5 release, Sun VDI Software 3.1 was just made available (get it here). This is an exciting update for us, here is a quick overview of what's new:

Microsoft Hyper-V support

Previous versions of Sun VDI Software already allowed for heterogeneous virtualization hosts, but we extend this support to include Microsoft Hyper-V in VDI 3.1. This means that you can use Sun built-in, VMware vSphere (or just ESX and vCenter, if that's what you've got), Microsoft Hyper-V, or any combination(!) to host your virtual desktops. This provides amazing flexibility and really reduces concerns around lock-in of any particular vendor. Want to change platforms? Easy, put up the new environment, test it with a group of users, migrate everyone over, and shut off the old one when you're ready (or keep it as a backup).

Remote Desktop Services support

We have lots of customers who use both classic server-based computing (SBC) and VDI at the same time. The trouble is that many architecture have you managing the two environments completely separately. But with Sun VDI Software 3.1, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 can be desktop providers. This means you can choose to assign any combination of VDI and SBC desktops to each of your users and manage the assignments from one management interface.

Sun Desktop Access Client

Sun VDI Software has leveraged both Sun Secure Global Desktop Software and the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection client to provide access from Windows PCs. With version 3.1, we add the Sun Desktop Access Client into the mix (no, we haven't dropped SGD or RDC support!). The Sun Desktop Access Client is a purpose-built piece of software that installs on Windows PCs and allows direct access to Sun VDI Software without any further server configuration or setup. It also leverages the exact same protocol as our award winning Sun Ray clients. It's simple, high performance, and allows you to seamlessly shift your virtual desktop session between a Sun Ray client and a PC.

Enhanced Adobe Flash media support

For a virtual desktop to be truly useful, it needs to approach the capabilities of a full desktop PC. A traditional stumbling block for any sort of remote access technology is high performance video and animation. With this release, Adobe Flash content is accelerated for both Sun Ray clients and Sun Desktop Access Client enabled PCs.

USB direction for Windows XP

If you're using a Sun Ray client and Windows XP as your virtual desktop operating system, you can now plug many USB devices into your Sun Ray client and they show up automatically in your Windows XP session.

There are lots of other smaller updates, too. For the full skinny, please read the full product documentation and enjoy the new release!

Thursday Nov 12, 2009

On November 10th we announced the release of Sun Ray Software 5. Among the fantastic set of new features, we included a new client called the Sun Desktop Access Client. Simply put, this is a software application that installs on Windows PCs, allowing you to access your desktop session on Sun's desktop virtualization technology. This sounds great, but what does it really mean for me or my customers? Let me explain...

A couple of fairly common scenarios I hear from customers is they believe only a portion of their end-users will fit the desktop or even laptop thin client model. Or many times customers have recently refreshed all their desktop systems and don't want to switch them out just yet. They all agree on the unequaled security and simplified management aspects of the architecture, but usually have concerns for mobile end-users who require a usable laptop even when offline, or maybe they need more graphical power locally, or simply are not ready to exchange their desktop systems for whatever the reason. With the Sun Desktop Access Client, users can now leverage their existing PCs to access the same virtual desktops any Sun Ray client user would. And with the added convenience of choosing between window mode or fullscreen, it's easy to work side-by-side on their current PC.

This now means all end-users, whether they're on a Sun Ray client or not, can access the same data and applications on the same secure architecture. And to make it even more convenient, you can "hot desk" or move your live session between any Sun Ray client and any Sun Desktop Access Client enabled PC.

This makes the Sun Desktop Access Client an extremely powerful and simple migration tool. For example, we have a customer that has several offices all over the world, some very small in remote locations, some large housing over a thousand employees. This makes training each group of employees on any new infrastructure a real challenge. With the Sun Desktop Access Client, they are able to provide everyone instant access from their current PCs to the new infrastructure, and roll out Sun Ray clients to groups in controlled stages. The option to deploy Sun Ray clients in this staged manner, allowed them to immediately standardize onto a single secure and scalable architecture on the back-end, providing every employee access to the same data, without spending all their money and IT resources trying to do a near-impossible replacement of all desktops in one big switch.

These examples use cases are just a sample of how the Sun Desktop Access Client might be able to help you and your business. I'll be posting many more use cases and customer examples in the weeks to come; however, for now, the best use case I can think of is to download the software and try it yourself! Of course you can contact your Sun sales reps and try out a Sun Ray clientanytime you want. But for now, with the free 90 day trial period and the ability to use your Windows PC as a client, there's nothing stopping you from giving it a try right now!

Tuesday Nov 10, 2009

Sun Ray Software 5 was released today and I've been asked by lots of folks when they can expect to see the new features appear in Sun VDI Software. I'm proud to tell you that the next version of Sun VDI Software is just around the corner, so watch this space closely over the next few weeks or follow the Sun VDI Software Twitter feed to be the first to know when it's released.

Just some quick notes on what you can expect from Sun VDI Software 3.1:

Monday Nov 09, 2009

The Sun Desktop Virtualization Marketing team is pleased to announce
the release of Sun Ray Software 5!

This release focuses on improving the end user experience with a
broader choice of end client devices, improved Adobe
Flash performance and expanded support for USB peripheral devices.
Additionally, Sun Ray Software 5 improves application server support,
by adding support for Windows Server 2008.

The Sun Desktop Access Client (SDAC) is revolutionizing Sun Ray
Software as we know it, making our vision and strategy of providing
simple, user-friendly access to a centralized virtual desktop
environment from nearly any device a reality. Easily installed on
Windows PCs, the Sun Desktop Access Client removes the dependency
on Sun Ray hardware clients, providing full access to Sun Ray
infrastructure. It provides a simplified solution for end-users who
do not fit the desktop thin client model, and require continued use
of their current Windows PC. As well, it helps to mitigate the
initial costs of migration to Sun's desktop technology by repurposing
existing PCs.
Providing client device choice to the customer helps our customers
embrace our technology and enables them to become more environmentally
friendly by extending the lifecyle of existing PCs rather than
disposing of them into a landfill.

Unlike some of our competitors, the
Sun Desktop Access Client frees users from being restricted to a
particular device and enables them to choose whatever device best
suits their needs.
In addition to client choice, another key challenge CIOs often face,
is how to provide a true PC experience to their end users from a
virtualized desktop environment. This release beats many of our
competitors to market by introducing multimedia enhancements for Adobe
Flash audio and video on both the Sun Ray hardware clients, as well as
any Sun Desktop Access Client enabled PC.

In addition to expanding client device choice and adding Adobe Flash
multimedia acceleration, Sun virtual desktop users can now expect
similar peripheral connectivity with their Sun Ray thin client
environment that they would normally have with their standard PCs. Sun
Ray Software 5 now enables users to connect many of their favorite USB devices to a Sun Ray hardware client, connecting them to their Windows
XP virtual desktop environment. Peripheral support includes a broad
range of devices such as USB flash storage devices, printers and
scanners.

Monday Sep 14, 2009

The Sun Desktop Virtualization Marketing team is pleased to announce
the Sun VDI Software 3.1 Early Access program and the Sun Ray Software
5 Early Access 2 program. Both programs begin 9/15/09, at 5am
PDT and they will end on 10/2/2009.

Which program should you join?

Choose Sun VDI Software 3.1 when you want to deploy server
hosted virtual desktops
running inside virtual machines to a variety of client devices. Choose Sun Ray Software 5 when you want to deploy Sun Ray
Software to Sun Ray Thin Clients or PCs in a more traditional
server-based computing model. You should also choose this program if
you want to deploy Sun Ray Software + VMware View Manager.

Sun VDI Software 3.1 Early Access

Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 3.1 allows organizations to
deploy a secure desktop environment hosted in the data center and
displayed on a number of client devices, including Windows PCs and Sun
Ray Thin Clients. This release adds Microsoft Hyper-V as an additional
virtualization host, support for virtual desktops generated by
Microsoft Terminal Services, and the Sun Desktop Access Client for
simplified access from Windows PCs. Sun VDI Software 3.1 also includes
a number of additional features for Sun Ray client devices, including
USB redirection and Adobe Flash enhancements. More details on new
features
are covered in the support
documentation.

Sun Ray Software is a secure, cost effective solution that delivers
a
rich virtual desktop to PCs or Sun Ray Thin Clients. The Sun Ray
Software
Early Access 2 program delivers four core new features: USB device
redirection to Windows, Adobe Flash Enhancements, Windows Server 2008
support and the Sun Desktop Access Client (code name was "Sun Ray Soft
Client"). Details of the features are
listed below.

1) USB device redirection to Windows
Remote Windows XP Desktop users can now deploy a multitude of Windows
USB devices
with Sun Ray Technology. A full list of supported devices is available
here.
Installation of Sun Ray Software for Solaris x86 or SPARC is required.
This feature is supported with Sun VDI as a part of the Sun VDI 3.1
Early Access Program or with VMware View Manager in the Sun Ray
Software 5 EA2 program.

4) Sun Desktop Access Client (code name was "Sun Ray Soft Client").
The Sun Desktop Access Client is a software application that easily
installs on common client operating systems and provides the ability to
connect to centralized desktops running on Sun's desktop virtualization
software products. An alternative to using a Sun Ray Thin Client, the
Sun Desktop Access Client meets the needs of end-users who
do not fit the desktop thin client model or who may need to connect
from
their existing laptop or desktop PC. The Sun Desktop Access Client also
provides the flexibility to 'hotdesk' to and from your Sun Ray Thin
Client and any supported Sun Desktop Access Client enabled PC.